Before Lyricism Wins 2018 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry!

Last week at the New York Rights Fair, the winners of the 2018 Best Translated Book Award were announced. The prize bestows $5,000 to both the author and translator of poetry and fiction books each year. This year, Rodrigo Fresán's The Invented Part, translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden (Argentina, Open Letter Books), won for fiction; and Before Lyricism by Eleni Vakalo, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich (Greece, Ugly Duckling Presse) has won in the poetry category!

The winners were announced online at The Millions, which shared this statement from the jury about the winning poetry selection: 

“Before Lyricism is a captivating collection of poetry as well as an awe-inspiring feat of translation. Eleni Vakalo makes her readers hear and see the images written on the page; the book creates its own world around you as you read. Vakalo pushes the Greek language to its limits, stretching its syntax and playing up its room for ambiguity. Karen Emmerich spent over a decade translating these poems and finding ways for English, normally so resistant to ambiguity, to open up and allow for a similar, unsettling abstraction. The end result is nothing short of miraculous and an absolute pleasure to read in English translation.”

Learn more about this year's prizes and jury at The Millions and Book Riot.